


the problem with having two, thousand year old brothers

by SuchASeeweedBrain



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker is there because I want him to be, Family Feels, Found Family, M/M, Nile POV, Post-Movie, Soft and fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25862878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuchASeeweedBrain/pseuds/SuchASeeweedBrain
Summary: Nile loved Nicky and Joe, she really did. Sometimes, though, her brain couldn't handle the name dropping.OrFive times where Nicky and Joe tell her about the time they met a famous historical figure and Nile's inability to handle this.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 28
Kudos: 479





	the problem with having two, thousand year old brothers

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely self-indulgent. Do I care? No. 
> 
> I love the idea of the Old Guard having met some very famous people throughout history and being really blasé about it. Also I love the idea of Nile just having minor mental breakdowns over this while they just kind of shrug it of, so yeah. This fic was born. 
> 
> I did some Googling for this, but I am no historian so there's probably historical inaccuracies in this, but it's fanfic so *shrugs* ya know?

‘So, how exactly did you learn to speak French?’ Nile asked. They were in Marseille, supposedly to “work on _Nile’s_ French”, but really they were there to “accidentally” run into Booker. Every single one of them (including Booker) knew it wasn’t an accident, but still, apparently it mattered.

‘Well, I learned the basics as we travelled, but I learned most of it around… 1177, from Joanna and then I perfected it around 1189, when I worked for Richard I.’ Nile blinked at him for a few seconds. Sometimes, when they were hanging around in a city like this, warm and relaxed and not fighting and bleeding and dying, it was easy to forget how old they really were.

‘Hold up, Richard I?’

‘Yes, you might know him as Richard Lionheart.’ Nicky said, like that was normal.

‘And who’s Joanna?’

‘His sister.’ Nicky said, stirring the delicious smelling food slowly. ‘Joanna of England, Queen of Sicily.’

‘Right.’ Nile said faintly. ‘Sure, a Queen and like, one of the most famous English Kings in history taught you French, no biggie.’ Nicky smiled at her over his shoulder.

‘Richard was a military genius, that’s for sure.’ His smile turned to a smirk. ‘He was also very much bisexual.’ Nile felt her eyes go wide. She wondered often, how young she must look to them, wide eyed, asking questions.

‘Don’t tell me that you knew him _biblically,_ like Andy with Rodin.’ Nicky laughed, warm and so, so comfortable.

‘No, Yusuf and I had already been together for some time at that point. That’s not to say he didn’t flirt with me a little.’

‘I never liked him.’ Joe commented from his chair where he’d apparently been listening. Nile thought he’d been too absorbed in his book. He didn’t sound like he actually meant that.

‘No you didn’t like him, you _adored_ him. Almost as much as you adored Saladin.’ The name rolled off Nicky’s tongue easily. It rung a bell, somewhere in the deep darks of what Nile remembered from her history lessons in high school.

‘Wait, wasn’t he the one who send a horse to Richard Lionheart when he saw he was fighting on foot, because… he thought a warrior and a king like him shouldn’t be fighting on foot?’ Both Joe and Nicky beamed at her, like they always did when she got a historical fact right. She tried not to make the comparison too often, but they were a little bit like proud dads/ older brothers.

‘The battle of Jaffa, 1192.’ Nicky said with a dip of his chin. ‘Très bien.’ 

‘Right, so what exactly were you doing, working for him?’ She turned to Joe. ‘And where were you? I thought you two were joined at the hip.’

‘Nah, we’ve spend time apart over the centuries. Never quite voluntary, but sometimes it was necessary. Nicky could hardly earn Richard’s trust if he had me by his side at all times.’ Joe said, putting an old receipt in his book as a marker and putting it on the table. ‘Nicky was trying to steer Richard towards making peace with Saladin, trying to stop another crusade, trying to make sure there wouldn’t be a repeat of the first one.’ The two of them spoke of the first crusade very, very rarely, in a way that made Nile take to Google instead of pressing for answers. Something fragile and painful.

When she read about the siege and the subsequent massacre, the slaughter after the fall of Jerusalem, she understood why. They’d lived through that. On opposite sides of it. It was where they’d met, in the middle of a truly horrifying moment in history. She didn’t like the way Nicky’s eyes shadowed when that time was mentioned, even after a millennium, guilt was still written all over him. Guilt, pain, anger.

‘Well, if I remember correctly, it worked, right?’ Nicky smiled at her again before turning back to their dinner.

‘Eventually, but that was mostly because Richard became friends with Saladin’s brother. Which was actually all Joe.’ Joe smirked, folding his arms behind his head.

‘It was, wasn’t it.’

\--

‘I hate it when people quote Shakespeare at me.’ Nicky grumbled, uncharacteristically annoyed.

They were in the US on a job and apparently, Nicky didn’t like America very much. He had an issue with their pizza and their “football” (‘It is mostly played with your _hands_!’) and probably some other things, but Nile had tuned out pretty quickly. Nicky loved her, she had exactly zero doubts about that. He didn’t love her as much as he did Joe, but she was pretty sure no one in the history of the world had loved someone as much as these two loved each other. Either way, she didn’t take his dislike for the US personally. Especially not since he’d learned to make deep-dish pizza, just because she missed it, even if his little Italian heart could barely bear to call it pizza.

‘What’s wrong with Shakespeare?’ Nile asked. Booker dropped his head back, it thumped against the wall with a dull thud.

‘Oh mon Dieu, here we go.’ He mumbled. Nicky flipped him off without looking.

‘Shakespeare was an asshole.’ Nicky said passionately, poking at the “food” Andy had gotten them with distain written all over his face. To be fair, this “chicken” didn’t look like chicken at all.

‘He most certainly was.’ Joe agreed, pointing at Nicky with his fork.

‘He was a self-absorbed piece of shit.’ Nile tilted her head in confusion. Joe leaned towards her a little, but didn’t lower his voice whatsoever.

‘Nicky was friends with his wife.’

‘Shakespeare was married?’ Nile asked. ‘I never even knew that.’

‘Exactly!’ Nicky grumbled. ‘The asshole spend all of his time in London writing his stupid, depressing plays, never depicting a single happy marriage and left Anne to raise their kids alone in the country. He didn’t even come home when his son died.’ He added something in Italian which Nile was _pretty_ sure was a nasty curse.

‘That does sound like he was a piece of shit.’ Nile agreed. ‘Did you guys ever meet him?’ Joe grinned at her.

‘Yes, Nicky punched him.’

‘Totally justified.’ Nicky said, finally smiling a little.

‘You- you _punched_ Shakespeare.’ Nile said, because that was a sentence she just needed to say out loud.

‘I’ve punched a lot of people through the years.’

‘He was also very much not-straight.’ Joe was trying, poorly, to hide a grin. He pointed at Nicky. ‘After Nicky punched him, he looked at him like he’d just fallen head over heels in love.’ Nicky rolled his eyes.

‘He was dirty and he stank. Plus, I like my poets with a little more romance and a little less “everyone dies in gruesome ways the end”.’ He smiled the smile he only smiled for Joe.

‘Grazie mille, mi amore.’

‘You punched Shakespeare and then he wanted to bang you?’ Nile summarized. ‘No, you know what, I can buy into that.’ Joe grinned widely.

‘I know, my Nicky is so sexy when he gets mad.’

‘Okay, now you’ve done it.’ Booker complained. ‘Now he’s going to spend the next hour waxing poetically about Nicky’s eyes and his arms and his ass.’

‘Let’s go find some decent food.’ Nile said, already rising from her seat. Booker was at the door before she’d even made it past the table.

‘Yes, _please_.’

\--

‘When was the last time you guys were here?’

‘We spend 1899 in New York.’ Nicky said, still looking through his scope dutifully. His patience was not something Nile thought she’d ever accomplish, even if she lived millennia. Booker and Andy weren’t supposed to come out for another two hours and yet Nicky had barely moved. He didn’t even seem the littlest bit impatient.

‘Ah yes, that was a fun time.’ Joe was sharpening Nicky’s sword with long, sure strokes. He looked messy in the way he seemed to have perfected. That effortless sort of, “eh, I’ve made no effort and yet I still look good” kind of way. Nile wasn’t sure if that was an age thing, or a Joe thing.

‘What happened here in 1899?’

‘The newsboy strike.’ Joe said, not stopping with the rhythmic slide, slide, slide against the sword.

It was interesting to Nile, how different they all were. Andy was just, striking. You noticed her the second she walked into a room. Nicky was quieter, but when he _looked_ at you, you stopped dead in your tracks, it was all in the eyes. Booker was… beautiful in a very sad sort of way. Even now that he was doing much better, he still always carried that sadness with him. Joe, though, Joe was… well, he compared Nicky to the moon, so she supposed that made Joe the sun. Bright and warm and a really fantastic artist. Always up for a laugh. Joe’s laugh and Nicky’s quiet smiles, those were the things she’d come to rely on.

Smiles like the one that graced Nicky’s face as he continued.

‘That’s when we met Roosevelt, right?’

‘You guys met _Roosevelt_?’ She asked, unable to keep the disbelieve from her voice. ‘I thought you were supposed to lay low. Meeting Kings and famous playwrights and Presidents doesn’t seem all that under the radar to me.’

‘He was only the Governor back then.’ Joe said with a shrug.

‘Right.’

‘He was a nice fella, a little weird.’ Joe added. ‘We didn’t think he’d actually end up president, but you know, good for him.’

‘He’s considered one of the top five presidents.’

‘Huh.’ Joe said, shrugging again before turning back to Nicky’s sword.

‘I could see that.’ Nicky agreed easily, but his eyes never strayed from his scope. Nile found herself sitting on the couch, staring at her two teammates.

\--

They went to the Louvre, because she had never been and the guys had quickly learned that Nile loved art. She spend fifteen minutes staring at the Mona Lisa. When they walked away, the first thing she said was:

‘It’s tiny.’ Booker made a noise close to a laugh, while Joe made a sound like she’d stabbed him. ‘I mean, I knew it was small, but it’s like, _tiny_. At least the Nachtwacht is _big_.’ She struggled getting the Dutch name out of her mouth, but she was practicing.

‘Nile, it’s a masterpiece. I mean, Da Vinci was a complete dickbag, but his works are extraordinary.’ Nile whipped her head around to face Joe.

‘You _met Da Vinci_?’ She hissed, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear them. Luckily now that they’d left the room where the Mona Lisa was, the crowd had thinned significantly.

‘Yes, we did.’ Nicky said from her other side. ‘The only reason Joe didn’t like him was because he kept flirting with him and calling him “an exotic beauty”.’

‘He was like, twenty years older than I was.’ Joe said, pouting. Nicky raised an eyebrow at him.

‘You were about 500 years old at that time.’

‘Physically I wasn’t.’ Joe argued without missing a beat.

‘And you didn’t care?’ Nile asked Nicky. She had known them for about five years now, and she still marvelled sometimes at how in synch these two were. Andy had once told her that “these two have had every single fight they could possibly have, about 500 years ago”. And while she’d seen them disagree (plans, dinner, travel locations, _ice cream flavours_ ), she had never seen or heard them fight.

‘Not even a little.’ Nicky said easily.

‘Because he was old and ugly?’ Nicky laughed, a bright, rare little thing.

‘No, because I know Yusuf loves me beyond all measure and reason.’ Nicky said, simply. Like it was the single thing he knew _for a fact_. Like it was the one thing he’d never questioned. He’d questioned faith and God and the universe and the truth and right and wrong but, he’d never, not once, questioned Joe. ‘As I love him.’

The moment was broken by Booker making a gagging sound, earning him a disapproving look from Nicky.

‘Okay, if you’re done pretending to be Joe. Can we go? I want crepes.’ Nile knew she brightened immediately at the thought of food because Booker smirked like he’d already won.

‘But we haven’t seen the whole museum yet.’ Joe tried arguing, but Nile turned the puppy dog eyes on him and she could see his resolve crumbling. Joe was _so_ weak for the puppy dog eyes. If it was Nile vs Nicky, Nicky always won, but he was pointedly looking away. He wanted crepes too. They were totally getting crepes. ‘Fine.’ Joe grumbled.

‘Good job, kid.’ Booker said as he swung his arm over her shoulder. ‘He’s not as weak for my sad eyes as he is for yours.’ Nile grinned at him as she settled her arm around his waist. She could hear Joe and Nicky bicker half-heartedly behind her in that old Italian dialect/Arabic combo that only the two of them spoke. She could also hear Joe was smiling and when she looked over her shoulder they were holding hands.

\--

‘Well, Andy was there for MLK’s “I have a dream” speech.’ Booker said, kicking his feet up on the table. ‘So she has, like, high standards, but even I have to say, this was particularly embarrassing.’

‘No.’ Nile whined. ‘You guys met doctor Martin Luther King? When will it _end_?’

‘What do you mean, Nile?’ Nicky asked as he walked into the room, pushing Booker’s feet off the table before sitting down on the small couch (no seriously, it could barely fit two people and it wasn’t supposed to be a loveseat).

‘The list of famous people you guys have met!’ She exclaimed. ‘It’s becoming ridiculous.’

‘Doctor King was a great man. Incredibly smart.’ Nicky just said, ignoring her little outburst.

‘Of course he was! He’s like, the godfather of the civil rights movement.’ Nile said. ‘It sucks that we’re just immortal and not time travellers.’ And yeah, that was a sentence she just spoke out loud.

‘No, time travel would be bad.’ Nicky said. ‘We’ve seen too much, there’s too much we would want to change and we have no idea what the effect would be.’

‘It’s better to just live in the moment and do the best you can.’ Joe agreed as he entered the room and squished himself onto the small couch next to Nicky, settling his hand at the back of his neck.

‘We fight for what we believe is right in the moment, sometimes history disagrees, sometimes we were wrong, but it’s all we can do.’ Nicky said and Nile let out a deep sigh. They were probably right. Still, Nile would have liked to meet some of these people, even if the others seemed like they hadn’t liked many of them.

‘Right.’ Nile said, trying to let that sink in for a second. ‘So, I remember seeing a picture at Copley’s place, of one of doctor King’s marches with a guy circled. He wondered if that was you, was it?’ She asked Nicky. Nicky smiled, leaning back into Joe’s hand.

‘Yes, it was. I really enjoyed listening to doctor King speak. It still upsets me that he got murdered right after we left.’ Joe rubbed his hand up and down Nicky’s back.

‘He was a good man.’

‘Yes he was. He’s one of those that I always wonder about, what he would have gone on to do if he had not been killed.’ Nicky got that far away look in his eyes for a second. Nile didn’t like it when he looked like that.

‘I bet he was.’ She said. ‘One question though: how is it that you guys always seem to meet these famous people? It’s not exactly flying under the radar.’

‘Well, I suppose when you insert yourself in nearly every war and revolution, you’re going to meet some extraordinary people.’ Joe said, leaning back against the couch. It didn’t look all that comfortable. Nicky followed him, seemingly without thinking about it, and settled with his back against Joe’s chest, one leg draped sideways over the arm of the small couch. Nile’s fingers itched to take a picture of them. It was a classic example of gays not knowing how to sit properly, a meme come to life right in front of her. Except she still hadn’t quite managed to explain memes to the guys, so she forced herself not to try again, it was exhausting honestly.

‘Well, who knows how many extraordinary people we’ve already met.’ Nicky said smiling warmly at her. ‘Who knows how many of the people that we’ve met over the last couple of years will end up in the history books. Maybe that activist we met in DC, or the young inventor we met in Amsterdam, maybe the aspiring politician and human rights activist in Sao Paulo.’ Nile found herself answering Nicky’s smile with one of her own.

She thought back to the missions they’d done. The people they’d met, the people they’d helped. Who knew what they would go on to do. Nicky was right, as he often was, she had no idea what would happen in the future. None of them did. All they could do was do the best they could in the moment and try to help people as much as they could. They might be immortal, but they weren’t Gods, they weren’t omniscient.

‘Did we tell you that Andy and Quýnh met Cleopatra?’ Joe asked, shit-eating grin on his face.

‘ _No!_ No more!’ Nile sprung up out of her chair and fled the room. The boys’ laughter following her to the bedroom she’d been assigned. She slammed the door shut, allowing herself that little bit of theatrics. She let herself fall onto her bed already feeling the grin take over her face. As she laid there, staring at the ceiling in some nondescript, old house in her fifth country that month, she laughed.

Family. They really felt like her family. Even though they hadn’t settled anywhere for longer than six months, she still felt at home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this!
> 
> I think most of the non-english is pretty self explanitory? But the Nachtwacht is the Nightwatch, by Rembrandt van Rijn. Mon Dieu is My God in French and, "grazie mille, mi amore" is "thank you very much, my love". Oh and also, Shakespeare's wife was actually called Anne Hathaway, nope, I am not making that up, you can Google it!
> 
> I will probably write more for this movie because I am mildly (HA!) obsessed. If you want to see my rapid decline into this fandom happen in real time, you can come check out my Tumblr: Daffietjuh
> 
> Comments make me squeal with delight!


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